> On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Matthew N. Dodd wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Anders Magnusson wrote:
> > > > The only difference I can see in the 3 machine is the amount of memory.
> > > > 
> > > > vax1 and vax2 have 24 megs of ram, and vax3 has 16 meg.  Would this
> > > > make a difference?
> > > > 
> > > Yes, it may. I have seen exactly the same behaviour on some of my 3100/38's.
> > > I have no idea why this happen, though.
> > 
> > Confirmed.  I pulled the 20m expansion card out of vax2 and it booted
> > (quite behind my back, as I turned around after being distracted and was
> > greeted with a # prompt.)
> > 
> > Again, 3100M48 boots with 4m and 16m but NOT 20m or 24m (and greater I
> > expect.)
> 
> It could also depend on the fact that 4 and 16 are exponents of 2, but 20
> and 24 are. Could you possible try 32?
> 
The problem is something with the LANCE addressing of memory. The LANCE
chip can only address 16MB of memory, and by some unknown reason it works
good when there are less than 16MB in the machine.

-- Ragge